An important work that combines intellectual history and natural history with reporting on the field to give us an accurate picture of the mass extinction unfolding right before our eyes. The diversity of life on earth abruptly and dramatically decreased five times over the last half a billion years.

The sixth extinction is now being monitored around the world by researchers. This is predicted to be the most devastating event since the asteroid impact which wiped out the dinosaurs. However, this time it is humans who are responsible for the disaster.

A decade’s worth of research from Elizabeth draws on dozens of disciplines, as she goes on field trips with many of them: geologists studying deep ocean cores, botanists following the tree line up the Andes, marine biologists diving off the Great Barrier Reef. The Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino are among the species she introduces, some extinct already and others in danger of disappearing.

In these stories, Kolbert traces the origins of the concept of extinction, first articulated in revolutionary Paris by the scientist Georges Cuvier through to the present day, through a moving account of disappearances. Kolbert observes that humanity’s sixth extinction will likely be its most lasting legacy; it forces us to rethink our defining characteristics as humans.